Let her have as much as she wants.' She put another slice on my plate. When it was gone, no one gave me more, but I knew I had to keep eating. When she handed me my piece, she said without thinking, 'Eat.' I had watched Mandy bake the cake and Bertha sew the gown and Nathan pick the flowers. In the middle of the table was a vase filled with flowers that Nathan, our manservant, had picked. You were small for your age even then, and you looked like a china doll, with a white ribbon in your black hair and your cheeksred from excitement.' Six layers.'īertha, our head maid, had sewn a special gown for me. 'For your birthday,' she'd start, 'I baked a beautiful cake.

I seem to remember that day perfectly, perhaps because Mandy told the tale so often. My first awareness of it came on my fifth birthday. I could picture the argument: Mandy's freckles standing out sharper than usual, her frizzy gray hair in disarray, and her double chin shaking with anger Mother still and intense, her brown curls damp from labor, the laughter gone from her eyes. She and Mother were horrified, but no matter how they explained it to Lucinda, they couldn't make her understand the terrible thing she'd done to me. Now stop crying, child.'įather was away on a trading expedition as usual, but our cook, Mandy, was there. Shaking her head sympathetically at Mother, the fairy touched my nose. When I cried inconsolably through my first hour of life, my tears were her inspiration. That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me.

Ella enchanted novel